High-End Salaries Boost Elizabeth Budget, Taxes

ELIZABETH – With payroll for the top 100 city employees at about $14 million, a standard wage hike this year will cost taxpayers an additional $550,000, according to publicly available data on municipal salaries.

Two city workers are even paid more than the governor of New Jersey: Fire Chief Edward Sisk, whose salary is $196,370, and Police Chief Ronald Simon, who receives $193,844.

[smartads]

In addition to voting for their own pay hike in December 2008, eight of the nine City Council members approved excessive wages for municipal workers.

First Ward Councilman Manny Grova and Sixth Ward Councilman Frank Mazza defended the mid-recession pay increases and offered a variety of excuses to justify wages that are – in some cases – four times the average family income in Elizabeth.

Councilmen Nelson Gonzalez and Councilman Joseph Keenan declined to be interviewed, while Fifth Ward Councilman William Gallman flatly denied that he approved pay hikes in spite of the recorded vote on record in the City Clerk’s office that clearly shows his support for the measure.

“They deserve it,” said Mazza of the city worker payroll. “We have the best police department. They all do a great job.”

We could compare our city’s top 100 city employees’ salaries to the proposal from our government about making teacher give up their standard wage hike, oh we are all over that one and even wishing our governor’s death, How come we don’t ask our city employees to give up only 10% of their salary, and no wage hike for one or a couple of years? This would be a way to keep property taxes down, once we do it, and then perhaps towns across NJ would follow. Yeah right? You see, we critiqued our governor but we don’t say, here, I’m willing to help too!! I happen to think that government wastes so much money at every level, local, state and federal and if we the citizens just continue to watch and don’t do anything about it, at least say something. We don’t even vote to elect all these local and state officials anymore…not only this mess isn’t going to get better, but we are digging a deeper hole. I know, we didn’t start the mess, we could try to fix it.